My little witticism glanced off Cardinal Fratricidelli like a toy arrow off a rhinocerous. “I will ask you one more time, Booster. Are you not the unnamed bishop in this article?”

He waved the rolled-up newspaper inches from my face. I was expecting him to swing it at my nose like a three wood, not neglecting the follow-through, when a sound like a sheep coughing on a distant crag alerted us to the fact that Monsignor Reeves had entered my study and was clearing his throat.

“If I may answer for Bishop Booster, your eminence, he was the source for the quotations.”

As I quivered at Reeves’s betrayal, the words of the Psalmist came to my mind: “Put not your trust in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.” I knew just how he felt. Had the Psalmist walked into the room just then, I would have shaken his hand.

Meanwhile, the papal nuncio unfurled the paper. “Are you saying this blot on the Apostles’ escutcheon actually told a reporter for the Washington Post that –“ he scanned the article quickly for some of the riper bits – “that, ‘American bishops aren’t shepherds. They aren’t even respectable sheep.’? Or, ‘Rome is a nice city, but the weather softens the head. I know it does mine.’? Or, ‘No, I wouldn’t call it a revolution, exactly. No, yes I would. I will call it a revolution. It is a revolution.’?”

“Yes, your eminence. Those are the words of Bishop Booster.”

Cardinal Fratricidelli swivelled his glare back to me, like a cobra trying to decide which mouse bit its tail. “And why did you tell the reporter all that?” he hissed. It isn’t easy to hiss that question, but he managed to do it.

“Oh, I don’t know, you know, don’t you know.”

“Bishop Booster’s intent was to use the power of the press against the call, from certain other members of the episcopacy, for a plenary council, your eminence.”

“How?” shouted the cardinal. “By making all the American bishops look like idiots?”

“Not all of them, your eminence. Just some of them.”

And here the two paused to glance at me in a way I would have objected to strongly had the circs. been less strained.

I think the key is Fr. Tucker's term "harmonious coexistence." It's difficult to argue against harmonious coexistence. My question is: Would offering several variations on the old and new missals actually produce harmonious coexistence, or would it rather produce a set of parallel, segregated, and at times antagonistic communities within the Church?

The historical examples of the multiplicity of rites don't age well, in my opinion. Yes, the Sarum Rite was a success, but Fifteenth Century England didn't have the Chunnel. People move around a lot more nowadays than they used to.

Also, rites used to vary by region; if you go to Milan, you expect the Ambrosian Rite. My understanding of Shawn's proposal is that all the rites would, to the extent possible, be available to every Catholic. if I travel to Denver on business, I check to see which Roman Catholic churches have Masses according to which rites when. I'm concerned that the practical result of this might be that I only rub elbows (or shake hands, depending on the rubrics used) with people outside my Mass of personal preference when I absolutely have to.

A third difference between then and now is that the multiplicity of rites originally arose more or less naturally. The Gallican Mass differed from the Roman Mass just because they did things differently in Lyons than they did in Rome. Nowadays, the motivations for multiple rites are theological and emotional. This rite is objectively better than that rite, or this rite makes me feel better. Neither type of motivation, in my opinion, suffices for manufacturing a multiplicity of rites where none now exists. A rite that is objectively worse, theologically, should not be used; and resurrecting a rite to make people feel good is to subjectivize the one thing in this world that is most objective.

Now, none of this demonstrates that "the co-existence of different uses of the Roman liturgy" is a bad or unworkable idea. We already have it, after all, albeit on a smaller scale than Shawn Tribe seems to be imagining. If we want to grow this variety while looking to history as our guide, though, we need to understand how past circumstances differ from present circumstances.

Correction: As originally written, the last sentence in the paragraph above beginning, "Also, rites used to vary by region," could be read to suggest that only rubbing elbows "with people outside my Mass of personal preference when I absolutely have to" is part of Shawn's proposal. I added a few words to make it clearer that I meant that I'm afraid this might be an unintended consequence, rather than something he advocates.

The Law of Androcomplexity states that, over time, men will take something and make it more complicated.

That law is being kept at the Jesus Journal, which has issued a Christian Weblog Manifesto calling for an association of Christian webloggers, complete with a formal committee, a code of conduct, training, and a master list of Christian weblogs. The purpose is to accentuate the positive aspects of Christian weblogging.

Here I thought the lack of formal committees was one of the positive aspects of Christian weblogging. If St. Blog's had parish council meetings I'd change to a different virtual parish, if not a whole new diocese.

Against all modern evidence to the contrary, I want to disbelieve that "a sense of having found" kills good art.

As counterexamples, she gives St. Augustine and Dante.

Ah, but Foote was speaking of novelists, and novels have different rules than autobiographies and poems.

Beauty is that which, being seen, pleases; when someone encounters the beautiful, he desires to rest in it. A novel about resting in beauty is unlikely to be a great novel; it may be very poetic, but it probably won't be very interesting. Novels tell stories, and stories are about conflicts, and where there is no conflict -- and only the perverse are conflicted about resting in beauty -- there is no story.

So yes, the modern evidence is that great novelists are not greatly devout; even the great Catholic novelists have not, as a class, been marked by their sanctity. But I think it's wrong to interpret this evidence, as some do, as meaning that Catholicism is somehow opposed to great novels, much less to great art. Rather, I think that doubt strengthens a desire to novelize, while trust weakens it. (Provisionally, I'd say doubt and trust work the other way round on the desire to versify.) Given that, the evidence follows as a simple matter of statistics.

(Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli also makes the point that Foote's statement is weaker than it appears, since many of the worst novelists have been doubters, too.)

“I don’t mean you personally, of course,” Berggo interruputed. “No one listens to you anyway, with that baby owl expression of yours. What I mean is, can we count on your secretary Reeves helping us?”

I drew up sharply. I was still stung by the falling out with Reeves over the matter of the indigo-blue chasuble, and I felt Berggo’s words to be salt in my wound.

“Monsignor Reeves,” I said with quiet dignity, “is unavailable to assist with your project.”

“Oh, good heavens! What have you done now, you ass? Whatever it is, apologize like usual, then unleash Reeves on the nuncio.”

I cleared my throat. “As I was saying, Bishop Berger, Monsignor Reeves is unavailable to assist with your project. I, however, am available, and I believe you will find that my assistance will provide you with all the, er, assistance required to bring the council off.”

Berggo looked at me a moment, tossed down the rest of his g. and tonic, and said, “All right, God help me, I’m just that desperate.”

“Desperate?” I eyed him sharply. Stouthearted and true though he may be, the only thing the Most Rev. Patrick Berger would ever be considered a genius at was falling into the soup. Taking in his manner now, which resembled that of a peasant in a Russian novel who is by no means certain he will outrun the wolves, I realized that there was something more behind his idea than he had let on. “What makes you so desperate to hold a plenary council, Berggo?”

He fiddled with his empty glass. “Well...”

“Come, come. Let’s dissolve into a flashback. Tell me all.”

“It’s just that I, er, rather promised my chancellor that there’d be one, that’s all.”

“Your chancellor?” I gasped. “You don’t mean...”

“Yes,” he replied, looking like a halibut that had been out in the sun for too long. “Sister Agatha.”

The documents for the canonization process of St. Dominic are on-line in English, and make fascinating reading for people who are fascinated reading such things.

Dominic always wished to dispute, talk or read about God or to pray while journeying.

Dominic passed the greater part and frequently the whole of the night in prayer while weeping freely.... On account of the many vigils, he frequently nodded at table.

[Dominic] rarely spoke, except with God, that is, in prayer, or of God.

He was always cheerful and pleasant; a comforter of the brethren, he was patient, merciful and kind.

But over and above all this, his holiness and virtues were universally recognized and publicly spoken of wherever he had visited during his lifetime....

By all accounts (no, I mean literally, all accounts; read 'em yourself), St. Dominic was consumed with zeal for preaching the Word of God, and for sanctification through strict observance of the Order's rule of life. He prayed more than he slept, and as he prayed -- at Mass, during the Office, or alone at night before the tabernacle -- he wept for sorrow, sighing, "Lord, what will become of sinners?"

Yet he was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and loved by all, "with the exception of heretics and enemies of the Church." (And he was not the torturer of the Black Legend; he fought against them "by word and by the example of a good life.")

As a preacher first and foremost, St. Dominic left very little in the way of writings, just a couple of letters and his contributions to the early Consititutions of the Order. These don't make good devotional reading, and his role in the Dominicans is not comparable to those of Benedict, Francis, Ignatius, and other great founders. (His brethren didn't even seek his canonization until after St. Francis was raised to the altars. And if you think Bl. Josemaria Escriva's cause was fast-tracked, what's to be made of the haste in these 13th Century cases? It never hurts when the reigning Pope said your founder's funeral Mass.)

What St. Dominic has left his children are the example of his own zealous and holy life and a Rule ideally suited, in any age, to the work of the Order: preaching and the salvation of souls.

Down through the centuries, Christian layfolk desiring to live holier lives have looked to the vowed religious for guidance, example, inspiration, and support. In many different ways, they became affiliated with religious houses: living in the houses under unvowed and voluntary religious observance; joining in the prayer life as far as possible; accepting spiritual direction and counsel from a monk or nun.

Over time, certain forms of attachment became regularized and regulated. Benedictine abbeys, for example, accepted oblates who made promises to the abbot and lived according to a certain rule. (A "rule" in this sense is actually a set of rules describing the obligations and responsibilites -- in terms of daily prayer, lifestyle, charitable works, governance of the community, and so forth -- of the one living under the rule.)

By the Middle Ages, it was common for religious orders to have congregations of men and of women, living under similar but not necessarily identical rules. Within a single canonical organization, the congregations of men were called the First Order, the congregations of women the Second Order. As layfolk associated with an order were organized into officially recognized associations, they became known as the Third Orders.

In this terminology, then, I am a Third Order Dominican. (Except that the Dominican Order no longer uses this terminology, lest it give the impression that First, Second, and Third signify worth or rank rather than a simple ordering. So I identify myself as a Lay Dominican -- or, more properly, as "Dominican Laity, Professed." The rule we use is called the Regula fraternitatum laicalium Sancti Dominici, but for whatever reason no one seems to speak of Lay Fraternities of St. Dominic.)

Anyway, many other religious orders and congregations have formal lay affiliates: tertiaries (members of Third Orders), oblates, associates of individual congregations or houses, membership in different confraternities (Rosary Confraternity members are considered members of the Dominican Family), and so forth.

There are also secular institutes, a relatively new form of life, whose members promise to follow the evangelical counsels -- poverty, chastity, obedience -- while living a secular life out in the world.

Then there's a host of other associations for lay Catholics -- some relatively new, some fairly old -- that seek to help sanctify their members according to different spiritualities and emphases.

Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been recognition throughout the Church that these lay associations of the faithful are not just old ladies' prayer clubs, but that the sanctification and formation of the members can contribute to the sanctification of the world that is the primary mission of the Church in general and the laity in particular.

I was just tucking in to my second helping of eggs and b. when Monsignor Reeves shimmered into the room.

"Ah Reeves, good morning!"

"Good morning, your excellency."

I eyed the salver he held, on which lay a few assorted envelopes and the morning newspaper. I was eager to get at the solution to yesterday's crossword -- 18 Down had been a particularly devilish one -- but protocol demanded that I first ask, "Nothing important in the mail, I suppose?"

"There is a letter that might prove to be of some import, your excellency."

These words sent a shiver down the Booster spine, as not since word came that the Bishops' Subcomittee on Complimentary Norms' semiannual meeting was cancelled had good news been found in a letter of some import delivered before the end of breakfast.

Still, though my brow was sad, my eye beneath flashed at Reeves like a something from its sheath as I said, "Oh, ah?"

"Precisely, your excellency." He set the letter -- a bally long one, too -- on the table next to my teacup.

I pronged at it with my fork. There were more than a half dozen pages, and the margins were none too generous. Whoever had sent it seemed not to have gone to any effort to tighten up the writing.

I set down my fork and pushed my plate away. The uneaten eggs, I was sure, would have turned to ashes on the way to my mouth.

"Is there a Reader's Digest version of this available, Reeves?" I asked. "I've got an anniversary Mass to get to by eleven."

"Several of your brother bishops are calling for the convening of a plenary council, your excellency. They wish to know whether you would care to support them."

"Plenary council?" I asked in surprise.

"Yes, your excellency. A plenary council is a national ecclesial synod --"

"Reeves," I cut him off coldly, "I am fully aware of what a plenary council is."

"Yes, your excellency."

"When I said, 'Plenary council?' I was not asking what a plenary council is," I went on. Sometimes it is necessary to remind Monsignor Reeves that, although I rely on him for occasional assistance with difficult situations, I am still a fully capable bishop. "I was merely reacting in suprise. A plenary council hasn't been called in this country in, what, --"

"One hundred eighteen years, your excellency."

"Yes. Precisely. Not in one hundred eighteen years. And if a fellow isn't allowed to be a bit surprised when he is hit between the eyes at the breakfast table by an idea that hasn't seen the light of day in one hundred eighteen years, then when is he allowed to be a bit surprised?"

It has been suggested that I am on a crusade to make you all Dominicans.

I answer that, Not everyone is called to be a Dominican, and in fact there are advantages to answering different calls. The Franciscans, for example, have more and better food. You get more peace and quiet with the Carmelites. Opus Dei offers a vigorous and rigorous formation for living in the world. The Jesuits have some very pleasant retreat houses. The Benedictines have fifteen hundred years worth of spiritual treasures to draw on, and some mighty fine liqueurs and foodstuffs.

Jack at Integrity gives the structure his prayer life took during law school, and asks what approaches others have taken. I became a Lay Dominican in large part precisely to give a structure to my own prayer life. It being my life, the structure has to suit me, and the Dominican structure fits me like a glove (albeit one with plenty of room to grow). But it doesn't fit everyone.

As I wrote in a comment at Integrity, "disciple" and "discipline" both come from the same Latin word (discipulus, meaning "student"), and there aren't many good disciples who don't have good discipline. Living according to a rule is a form of discipline I think all laity should consider, whether it be a formal rule approved by the Church or a private one developed from the spiritual wisdom accumulated by the Church over the millennia.

Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli was feeling despondent about the lack of visible reaction to his reflections on St. John of the Cross. He's since seen this feeling in the light his vocation as a Carmelite.

At the risk of interfering with Steven's ascent of Mt. Carmel, I encourage everyone to join me in visiting Flos Carmeli frequently. It's a remarkable blog, even if no one's told Steven.

John McGuinness places Disputations in "orthodox blog land." In a related note, Mike at Enemy of the Church? is resisting

the temptation to grill the more "orthodox" members of St. Blogs about the way it sometimes seems they wallow in hostility and blamesmanship. I wonder how can they live with what appears to be such constant anger and with the caustic combination of being convinced most of the members of "AmChurch" are fools and being unwilling to suffer fools (hence most of "Amchurch") gladly.

While I do consider myself orthodox -- which, after all, merely means "having right beliefs" -- I don't think I ever identify myself as an "orthodox Catholic." I find the use of the term "AmChurch" wearisome. My favorite description of me, from a list someone wrote describing members of a Catholic mailing list I'm on, is, "Average Catholic, likes St. Thomas." I will also raise my hand when someone asks if there are any boot-licking Vatican toadies in the house.

I don't have any insightful or non-negotiable opinions about liturgy, translations, enneagrams, EWTN, or Cardinal Law. What I will object to strenuously, though, are Catholics who demonstrate no faith in the Catholic faith.

A popular hypothetical question directed to Christians is, "What if they found Jesus' bones in a tomb?"

One common answer is, "This would have no significant effect upon my faith, which is based on a personal encounter with the Divine, not a rigorous and literal reading of Biblical texts. Certainly the Resurrection event, as experienced by the disciples in the years following the crucifixion, would therefore not have been one of experiencing Jesus physically, but of experiencing his spiritual presence in their community, none the less real -- and in a sense much more real -- of a presence for it not being defined by the spatial limitations of even a glorified human body."

A moment's thought shows this to be a nuanced, flexible, and cowardly answer more suitable for belly-crawling corporate yes-men two years from retirement than for faith-filled disciples of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, more for people whose faith consists merely of vague and ambiguously subjective emotions than for those whose faith is of Christ and Him crucified.

The correct answer, it seems to me, is (borrowing a phrase from Flannery O'Connor), "Then to hell with it." Or, as someone else once put it, "If Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching; empty, too, your faith."

John McGuinness on Man Bites Blog urges restraint on the rhetoric swirling over the miracle of sharing" interpretation of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. In response to Rod Dreher's claim that "we are in the middle of a war for the survival of the Church. The lack of fidelity is the root cause for all our woes," John writes:

First of all, the root cause for all our woes is priests who sexually abused children. Period.

I think John misses the scope of Rod's claim, which is not about the abuse-and-coverup scandals, but about the survival of the Church. Priests who sexually abused children did not cause attendance at Sunday Mass to fall to whatever dismal fraction it was last December; they did not cause large numbers of American Catholics to be so poorly catechized, to support legal abortion, to avoid the sacrament of reconciliation, to believe that any religion is about as good as any other.

I'm not sure that Rod's claim (borrowed, perhaps, from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus) that infidelity is the root cause for all our woes says all that much; it seems to me to be derivable from, "Not being holy is the cause of us not being holy." Still, being the creatures we are, we need to be reminded of such things from time to time.

John goes on to wonder at the vehemence with which the Woodstock moment interpretation of the miracle of the loaves and fishes is rejected:

What I do think is worth examining is why this interpretation is so threatening to people. What would it mean if someone could factually verify that it was in fact a miracle of sharing? Would that change what we believe in?

First, I reject the assertion that I find the sharing interpretation threatening. I do not find it threatening. I find it foolish and ignorant and self-centered and damaging, but not threatening.

The first question to ask of a Scriptural passage -- and this is Catholicism 101, going back explicitly pretty much as far back as Christians asked questions of Scriptural passages -- is, "What is the literal meaning of the passage?"

But this is not a question the sharing interpreters ask -- or, if they do ask, they don't care about the answer. They cannot possibly care, because in all five of the passages recording a miraculous feeding of a multitude, the literal meaning is unambiguously and undeniably that the entire multitude ate their fill from a very small number of loaves and fishes, and that the leftover scraps from those self-same loaves and fishes amounted to far more than the very small number they were to begin with. This is what the Gospels say. This is what the priest or deacon proclaims to the congregation -- explicitly and unequivocally -- when he reads the Gospel passages.

How, then, can someone even arrive at the thought that the "real miracle" is one of sharing? It's not in the Gospels. In fact, it explicitly contradicts what is in the Gospels. It's not in the Church Fathers. It's not anywhere in the Church down through the centuries.

Instead, it comes from men outside the Church whose foremost dogma was, "Miracles have never happened."

Now, if miracles have never happened, the exegete has a problem with the miracle of the loaves and fishes. He needs a non-miraculous explanation of how a multitude ate. Well, obviously there must have been a multitude of food, despite the stories explicitly stating that there was not a multitude of food.

But the exegete also needs an explanation of why such an uninteresting story would be recorded five times in four Gospels. He seizes on this: "It is a miracle to get people to share with each other."

The problem with this, as has been pointed out by others, is that it is not a miracle to get people to share with others. It just isn't. People help other people in need; haven't you noticed?

The claim that sharing with others is miraculous may say something true about the person making the claim, or about his opinion of the people around him, but it is demonstrably false in itself.

So, from my perspective, anyone asserting that the Gospel stories of the miracle of the loaves and fishes is really about Jesus coaxing the crowd into sharing what they had

has never read the Gospels with any level of attention.

bases his assertion on a dogma that contradicts the Catholic faith.

is a lousy observer of human nature.

reduces Jesus from the source of our life to a good example.

Given that, I think it's clear to see why I do not want to hear (or hear of) Catholics preaching this nonsense to other Catholics.

As seen on Catholic Light: This Thursday, August 8, St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Great Falls, Virginia, will be the site of a special liturgical program. The public Rosary (good under the usual conditions for a plenary indulgence) at 6:30 will be followed by chanted Vespers at 7 p.m., then a chanted Latin Mass at 7:30 p.m. The Washington Capella Antiqua (featuring Catholic Light's Steve Schultz) will do much of the singing, which is good news for people like me who -- well, let's just say who wouldn't be invited to a second audition with a group like the Washington Capella Antiqua.

I will be there, God willing, faking my way through the Latin responses with gusto. I hope to meet Steve and any other blogfolk who can make it. (There's a phone number to RSVP on the web page.) I'll be the one wearing a small Dominican shield on my lapel, in honor of the Feast of St. Dominic.

There's an old saw that mysticism begins in a mist and ends in a schism, and it's widely thought that this is just what happened with Meister Eckhart.

Eckhart was a Fourteenth Century Dominican friar and mystic whose startling and original style of preaching left him open to charges of heresy. One of his famous statements is, "I am good, but God is not good," and he goes on to claim that it is untrue to say that God is wise or even that He exists. His point, of course, is that words cannot adequately describe God:

Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin. If you wish to be perfect and without sin, then do not prattle about God. Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A master says: If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God.

If you've read the Tao Te Ching, this may well put you in mind of its opening line: "The Tao that can be named is not the read Tao."

Syncretists, of course, love to find similarities between different traditions, and Eckhart is a mine of difficult or ambiguous sayings that bear at least a surface similarity to a lot of non-Christian mystical writing. Add to that the cachet of the condemnation of several of Eckhart's propositions by the Church as heretical -- after his death, to be sure, and with explicit recognition of his submission to the judgment of the Holy See, but not all wise Catholics can be burned by the Church -- and you can see why Meister Eckhart is a popular authority among Western Postchristians. (You can also see why he is referred to as a pantheist by Western fundamentalists.)

The Dominican Order, which has never disowned its Meister, has been working toward obtaining a papal declaration to the effect that Eckhart's writings are "an expression of authentic Christian mysticism and ... trustworthy guides to the Christian life according to the spirit of the gospel." There is even a fifteen-year-old Eckhart Society whose goals include the promotion of Eckhart's writings and the scholarly study of his life and works. (The goals also include promotion of Eckhart's teachings in interreligious dialogue, so even should a papal declaration be given the pantheist charge will survive.)

I could really use some help with mine, for instance, and I imagine yours is in much the same shape. That guy down the street needs some help, too. And the person on the way to work this morning…And the woman who…

As with air masks that drop down from the ceiling in the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, the saving of souls works best if you take care of yourself before assisting those around you.

The Fundamental Constitution of the Dominican friars, quoting the Order's Primitive Constitutions, states that "the Order of Friars Preachers founded by St. Dominic 'is known from the beginning to have been instituted especially for preaching and the salvation of souls.'" St. Dominic understood that the salvation of souls begins at home. A preaching friar who saves thousands of souls, but not his own, isn't a very good preaching friar.

Fortunately, the way things are set up is such that saving your own soul makes it much easier to save other souls. You have the help of the graces that come to a soul that is right with God, you are more likely to do what is effective for others if your own mind and heart are properly ordered, and you are simply more attractive to others who are open to the Spirit.

I don't think I'm writing anything contrary to what JB wrote. We can't wait until our souls are irreversibly saved to start worrying about others. I'm just making the obvious point that the holier we are, the holier we can help others to be.

The conversation at In Between Naps turned to the "naturalistic" explanation of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes: that the "real" miracle was that everyone shared their food with everyone else.

I'm pro-miracle by temperament. I like to say that not all miracles are miraculous, meaning that God's actions in our lives don't always take astonishing or inexplicable forms.

But this multiplication-by-sharing wheeze is playing Scripture backwards, taking something that is clearly related as a miraculous miracle and downgrading it into a soft-focus moment of gosh-darned neighborliness brought to you by your local Coca-Cola bottler.

I'd like to teach the world to shareTheir barley loaves and fish.To get my friends to love and careIs my one greatest wish.

The absurdity of the non-miracle position is made worse by the fact that it makes utter hash of the story.

"Martha, have you heard? That healer, Jesus of Nazareth, is in a boat near a deserted place not far from here. Perhaps if we bring young Jude to him, he will be able to heal Jude's withered arm. Let us go!"

"Okay, but first let me pack a picnic basket."

"Good thinking. While you're at it, pack more food than we'll need. I can use the exercise carrying that extra weight."

As I understand it, Catholic belief in non-miracles can be traced to (at least) the 19th Century dogmatic denial of miracles by men who considered themselves theologians. As with most things, Catholics complicate the simple idea that Jesus performed no miracles by believing that He is nevertheless God's Son. The result smacks of Pelagianism: "Gosh, Jesus showed others how to be nice. I'm nice, too, and I can show others how to be nice. Heaven, here I come!"

What we have, then, are trendy theologians teaching 150-year-old oxymorons to people eager to hear that they're God's children, too. This is bad theology. When a theologian does bad theology, what's left?

(It occurred to me yesterday that the Attack of the Workshopped Liturgists is, too often, the story of liturgists who don't know liturgy. And I don't mean they do bad liturgy, I mean they flat don't know the liturgy. When a liturgist does something that is explicitly contrary to liturgical norms, she is not demonstrating creativity or sensibility or prophetic vision, she is demonstrating ignorance. If liturgists don't know liturgy, what are they good for except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot?)

(Er, I mean, if they don't know liturgy, why are they considered liturgists?)

Just what thought causes this devotion? What mysteries pondered over by our minds can give us that ready willingness to do what concerns the worship of God? St. Thomas points out two great classes of truth which are immediate causes of devotion; one positive, the other negative. On the positive side there are the beauties of divine goodness in itself and in its benefits to us; on the negative side, our side, there are the defects and insufficiencies that drive home our need of God and uproot the great impediment to devotion which is presumption. God made it easier for us by sending His Son. To our stumbling minds and fickle hearts the tangible world has an immediate and powerful appeal; ready to our hand we have the humanity of Christ with its infinite material for our prayerful consideration. We cannot think very often of Christ without seeing the magnificence of His divinity bursting through into His human acts, filling us with awe, love and loyalty to the Son of Mary. Nor can we follow His tired feet through Palestine without becoming acutely conscious of the insufficiencies, the defects of our nature.

Not quite "See Dick run," but to me Fr. Farrell's work reads the way the Summa ought to be preached.

A comment on one of my Rosary posts points out that both Marian apparitions and papal exhortations have called on Catholics to pray the Rosary:

Now are you gonna disobey your mother AND "father"? Mary even gives acknowledgment to the fact that excuses will be made so she starts a beginner out slowly. But most of all she asks us to pray with the heart - and giving a mother something that takes effort shows far more love from the heart than trying to discover something that feels good to ME.

Apparitions, of course, cannot promulgate binding precepts on Catholics, and while many popes have urged all the faithful to pray the Rosary, none has commanded it.

But I find extremely distateful any implication that anyone who finds the Rosary a less fruitful way of prayer than some other form is merely looking for something that makes them feel good. The Rosary is a weapon against the world, the flesh, and the devil, not other Catholics who do not measure up to one's personal standards of piety.

The goal of the Christian life is perfection in Christ. Praying the Rosary is a tremendously effective aid to achieving this goal, but it doesn't work by magic. If it is not helping you to become perfect in Christ -- although, as I've written before, it takes some time and effort to be sure about this -- then don't pray it.

I will say, though, that all Catholics ought to honor Mary in some devotional way. Not only is this honor due her as Mother of God and Mother of the Church, but in my experience and that of many, many people throughout the centuries, it is astonishingly, almost exhiliratingly, returned in spiritual graces and favors.

On HMS Blog, Woodeene Koenig-Bricker thinks like a parent and concludes that God doesn't send us suffering:

If I, as an imperfect parent, wouldn't out of the blue impose pain and suffering on my child even though I know, as the parent and adult, that he still had some growth stages to go through, then why would God, who is so much better a parent, do that to me? I can understand God allowing me to suffer as the natural (or even supernatural) consequences of my sinful actions, but I can't accept the notion that God would suddenly decide to send a little suffering my way just to improve me.

First, whatever God does, He doesn't do them suddenly or out of the blue, but from eternity and out of love.

But I'm surprised that Woodeene's conclusions arose from her thinking about herself as a parent. When I think about myself as a parent, I come to quite different conclusions.

Of course, I impose pain and suffering on my children every day. I even have a name for it: "Bedtime."

My children's pain at bedtime is real pain, and their suffering is real suffering, and I am the efficient cause of both. I intentionally take away from them a real good -- the good of play (which, for children, also includes the good of work) -- and give them no immediate or evident good in its place. Sometimes I literally take something out of their hands, and they react to this actual loss of something good precisely as though they have had something good taken away from them by their father. Yet their suffering is not a consequence of their sinful actions.

This homely rumination says more about me and my kids than it does about God, but it is the sort of thinking I do to help me understand such passages as Job 5:17-18:

Happy is the man whom God reproves! The Almighty's chastening do not reject. For he wounds, but he binds up; he smites, but his hands give healing.

Tom Abbott of GoodForm offers a passionate exhortation to the Rosary for those who find it burdensome:

Get a hold of books by St. Louis DeMontfort. Ask our Blessed Mother to help you with the Rosary. If the Rosary is burdensome, then offer it up as penance and be reminded that you are creating a beautiful crown of roses and presenting it to our Lady as a gift of love and gratitude. If the rosary is a burden, then how much more beautiful and how much more well received will that crown of roses be when our Blessed Mother receives it knowing how difficult it was for you to create it.

I agree that the Rosary can be a difficult treasure box to open and that the effort to open it can be very rewarding.

But: If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you.

The purpose of a devotion is to bring you closer to God, and if all the Rosary brings you close to is chucking the beads out of a window, then perhaps you should chuck the beads, not out of a window, but out of your prayer life. (Put the beads away some place; there may yet come a time when you'll need them.)

St. Therese wrote, "It's a terrible thing to admit, but saying the Rosary takes it out of me more than any hair shirt ... Try as I will, I cannot meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary. I just cannot fix my mind on them." (I'm told the early editions of her autobiography omitted such passages.) As a Carmelite, though, she had to pray the Rosary, and -- agreeing with Tom -- decided that the sheer effort of doing so would be at least as profitable as twenty minutes of easy meditation.

Trying to balance all this, I'd say that, yes, even an arid and burdensome habit of praying the Rosary can be good for the soul, but it's entirely possible that for you there is another form of prayer that is better.

As an aside, in the same post Tom quotes St. Louis de Montfort, T.O.P., quoting Bl. Alan de la Roche, O.P., quoting a vision of Mary:

Know, my son, and make all others know, that it is a probable and proximate sign of eternal damnation to have an aversion, a lukewarmness, or a negligence in saying the Angelical Salutation, which has repaired the whole world.

Taking nothing away from the sanctity and the good works of Bl. Alan, he is not, shall we say, universally considered an impeccable recorder of genuine mystical experience.

[I]f contemplation were the proper and essential cause of devotion, the higher objects of contemplation would arouse greater devotion. But the contrary is the case: since frequently we are urged to greater devotion by considering Christ's Passion and other mysteries of His humanity than by considering the greatness of His Godhead.

He replied:

Matters concerning the Godhead are, in themselves, the strongest incentive to love and consequently to devotion, because God is supremely lovable. Yet such is the weakness of the human mind that it needs a guiding hand, not only to the knowledge, but also to the love of Divine things by means of certain sensible objects known to us. Chief among these is the humanity of Christ, according to the words of the Preface [for Christmastide], "that through knowing God visibly, we may be caught up to the love of things invisible." Wherefore matters relating to Christ's humanity are the chief incentive to devotion, leading us thither as a guiding hand, although devotion itself has for its object matters concerning the Godhead.

I've emphasized the point I want to draw out: The human mind needs a guiding hand, by means of sensible objects, to the love [dilectio] of divine things.

This is not a theological argument. It's not a matter of Revelation, and you won't find it explicit in Scripture. It's simply an observed fact about humans: We do better moving from the sensible to the incomprehensible.

As an observed fact, it isn't categorical and universal. There are exceptions; numerous saints fell into rapture with no physical or mental prompting, and God may grant us moments of contemplation whenever He choses. Still, this is the experience of almost everyone almost all the time.

St. Thomas rightly points out that chief among the sensible things that lead to devotion is the humanity of Christ. It's a point that bears a lifetime of study, but for now let me move on to the next best thing: the humanity of Mary, the Mother of God.

David Alexander thinks something not quite entirely unlike an older form of the Rosary -- which older form featured different clausulae (short phrases recalling elements of Jesus' life, death and resurrection) recited for each Ave, rather than the "second half" of the "Hail Mary" ("Holy Mary, Mother of God,....") -- is worth fostering. (My apologies for misrepresenting him in the first version of this.)

I agree, largely because it gives me an (admittedly weak) excuse to tout one of my favorite books: Through the Rosary with Fra Angelico.

This is a booklet of 150 clausulae, taken from the writings of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, with accompanying pictures of the fifteen mysteries taken from paintings by Fra Angelico (John da Fiesole, to his friends).

You can buy the booklet for $2.95 through most of the major on-line booksellers, or go through the St. Joseph Province Dominican Laity catalogue for $2.50. Go ahead and order two copies, so you can give one away to the next person you meet who loves beauty.

Steven Riddle of the very fine blog Flos Carmeli confesses that the Rosary is not his prayer of choice: "I regard the rosary as a onerous penance -- doing a single decade is, for me, like trampling through a lake of liquid lead."

He's hardly the first Carmelite to feel that way. St. Therese didn't get much out of it either.

Most people think of the Rosary as a five-decade prayer, the mysteries varying with the day. Purists would say it's a fifteen-decade prayer, by custom divided into three parts.

I think there's a case to be made that the Rosary is an unending prayer; after the Coronation, you turn to the Annunciation, and keep going. Day by day, you incorporate the rhythm of Christ's life, death, and resurrection -- and of Mary's participation in them -- into your own life.

Taking this long view helps me pray the Rosary. When I get to the end of a decade and realized I barely thought about the mystery, I don't get too upset. For one thing, I know I'll have another chance to meditate on that mystery every few days for the rest of my life. For another, even barely thinking about it is more thinking about it than I'd have done if I weren't praying the Rosary.

As you can tell, I am not very efficient in praying the Rosary, but then I don't think the Rosary needs to be a very efficient prayer.

I don't believe that every Catholic needs to pray the Rosary every day; if people say they are temperamentally ill-suited for it who am I to say they're wrong? But I suspect some of the people who find the Rosary dreary are expecting too much of it, and of themselves, at every Hail Mary, or even every five decades.

What I recommend for those who are unsure, one way or another, of the role of the Rosary in their prayer life is to commit to praying it daily for a month, supported by some of the vast devotional literature that brings out its richness (this is important; there are hundreds of techniques and variations that might help bring the Rosary to life). They can see what they think about it after using it for a while unfettered by expectations of immediate results.

The reason I held off adding comments to Disputations for a couple of months was that I didn't want to be responsible for the sort of irresponsible comments -- wanting in charity, prudence, and occasionally plain facts -- I was seeing on other blogs.

Eventually, though, I recognized that this site attracts a higher caliber of reader, and I had little to fear on that score.

Soon after, Mark Butterworth of Sunny Days in Heaven took issue with my statement, "Can anyone but a fool deny that the Pope lives as though he believes the Faith?", writing in a comment, "I don't find JPII is all that much a believer other than in a simplistic, and rather superstitious way."

Over the course of two further comments, Mark attacked the Church's Mariology, the Eucharist, and my own faith and rationality. "What a frightening kind of Christianity and God you believe in," he wrote with characteristic hauteur.

His attacks are of a kind I call "cheap to offer, dear to counter." It is the work of a moment to write, as he did, "[E]xplain in a rational, logical, and sensible manner why anyone should pray to Mary rather than to God. You can't do so....." It takes considerable more time and trouble to explain in a rational, logical, and sensible manner why anyone should pray to Mary rather than to God. (As it happens, just last week I came across the perfect launching point for this precise question in an unlikely spot in the Summa (II-II, 82, 3, if you want to work ahead), but I haven't had a chance to pull it together.)

The impression such a cheap-to-offer assertion leaves is that -- since the dear-to-counter reply is so late in coming, and so wordy when finally presented, and (most likely) admittedly incomplete even then -- the assertion must be true. Given a choice, the human mind tends to prefer the simpler answer.

I can't really complain about having my faith publically challenged. Above and beyond the basic requirement for Christians to be prepared to defend their faith, I belong to an Order whose rule for laity states, "Every Dominican should be able to preach the word of God."

At the same time, I don't feel obligated to leave Mark's insulting and inaccurate attacks on me, the Pope, and the Church unanswered in the Disputations comments until I have the opportunity to answer them. He can post them on his own blog, if he likes, but I prefer not to sponsor a falsehood uncountered by the truth. I've saved his comments, though, and will reply in my own time.

I occasionally tell people they should be saints, along the lines of this:

Joe Smith: What we really need now is a 21st Century St. Catherine of Siena.

Me: Have you considered the possibility that what we really need now is a 21st Century St. Joe Smith?

I feel like I'm being daring and boldly prophetic, but more often than not the response is, "Oh, I don't want to be a saint, I just want to be better than I am." (The reply that really shuts me up, though, is, "You first.")

People seem to be afraid, or at least unwilling, to see holiness as a personal goal. Some see it as too far beyond their ability (which it is; hence the Crucifixion). Some see it as a mark of pride, as though "I want to be a saint" means "Venerate me" rather than "I want to love God with all my heart, and all my soul, and all my mind, and all my strength." Some are genuinely uninterested in being holy; they're satisfied with loving God with some of their heart, a fair piece of their soul, a smackerel of their mind, and whatever strength they can summon for an hour Sunday morning.

Exhortation will only work for those who already know they should be holy. For the others, I'm afraid what's needed is an example.

These are not ideas holy people might try out to become holier. Prayer -- regular, disciplined, daily -- is how people become holy in the first place! It's a safe bet that anyone who isn't already doing at least the equivalent of the above isn't going to be very holy.

This list is, by and large, the one spiritual directors have been giving people -- rich, poor, simple, educated -- for centuries. Other than daily Mass, anyone in good health who can read this blog could do everything on this list by simply chosing to do so. It means taking less than an hour out of your day -- don't try to "find the time," it's not misplaced, just misused -- and giving it back to God, Who gave it to you in the first place. American Catholics are famously bad at tithing their treasure. How do we do at tithing our time?

The key word, I think, is "habit." (And remember, a good habit is called a virtue.) You don't develop a habit by waking up one Monday and making a morning offering. You develop it by doing it every day, until doing it is easier than not doing it. You do it, for example, by saying, "Every day of August, I will spend fifteen minutes reading the Gospels. On September 1, I will ask myself whether I want to continue."

And if you did spend fifteen minutes reading the Gospels every day of August -- not studying them so much as praying them, not to discover ordinary life in 1st Century Palestine so much as to discover Christ -- then I bet you'll spend fifteen minutes reading the Gospels on September 1.

Minute Particulars (which could rename itself Ten Minute Particulars, at least when the subject is philosophy) had an interesting challenge to the idea of cryonics: a corpse is not a human being, and once the soul separates from the body there is no natural mechanism capable of reuniting them.

This has been dismissed by others as "religion" or "mysticism," although Mark is explicit about his argument being based on Aristotle's hoary old pagan theory about the soul being the principle of life of the body.

Honestly, what do they teach in school these days? Apparently not hylomorphism.

(Well, they didn't teach hylomorphism to me in school, either, but I've picked up a little about it here and there. One excellent contemporary source of radical Aristotelianism is William A. Wallace, OP. If you find his name as author of an article or book, it's a safe bet you're going to get some straight-up, unreconstructed Aristotelian philosophy.)

Woodeene Koenig-Bricker adds a categorical statement to the ongoing discussion about God and suffering: "God cannot be the source of all that is good and still be the author of pain and suffering in my theological framework."

One question this raises is, "What does it mean to be an 'author of pain and suffering'?" As I've written before, a lot of this discussion is as much semantic as theological, an effort to find words that express (analogically, it is true, but no less meaningfully for that) a mystery we at best only dimly understand.

For example, we might be able to agree that lions are good, and that God is the source of lions, and that lions cause a great deal of pain and suffering to zebras. Is the "source" of the "cause" of pain the "author" of the pain? It depends how you define your terms.

(There is an argument that lions only eat zebras because of Adam's sin. I'm not convinced of the soundness of this argument.)

Fr. Keyes brings in an important dimension -- perhaps the important dimension -- to human suffering: our relationship to Jesus:

For me, “why” and “how” are more important than “what end?” The question of “who with” has never seen the light of day in other posts.

The meaning of suffering is discovered in who we are and who we are with, and not simply in “our response.”

If you are never far from the sufferings of Jesus, then your own sufferings will be united to His just as you are united to Him, and indeed you will come to love your sufferings insofar as you see them as the means to union with Jesus. As St. Gaspar writes, the soul "loves its sufferings in peace.... It loves the cup the Father gave [Jesus]."

Summa Contra Mundum points out one of Garry Wills's errors, the one that confuses the sensus fidei with informal majority opinion of white American Catholics as determined by polls taken by the secular media.

This confusion is a symptom of clericalism, the idea that the Church has a two-class membership: priests and rabble. The rabble are supposed to possess an infallibility, independent of and greater than that of the bishops. This view cannot for a moment be defended, but, I suppose, it is very common.

There are various more or less obvious theological and ecclesiological points to be made, but to descend to the baldly practical: No church that practices infant baptism can rely on opinion polls to define unchanging doctrine. Being a baptized Catholic and being knowledgable about the Faith are only weakly correlated.

David Alexander indicates that I've done a fair -- well, shocking -- amount of blogging on the Liturgy of the Hours, specifically the Office of Prime. I'd intended those to be something of a warm-up to more substantive commentary, but I think I'll let the iron cool a bit. I shouldn't be spending more time talking about the Divine Office than praying it.

I will, though, add an enthusiastic word for Magnificat magazine, and not just because it's produced by the Dominicans of St. Joseph's (Eastern U.S.) Province. Apart from its use as material for prayer and study, it is a simply beautiful magazine. Having copies in your home will make your home, and therefore you, more beautiful. Skip the leatherette cover unless you always spill things on your nightstand.

It's a trite observation that Pope John Paul II draws energy from the enthusiasm of the young (although the contrast between his appearance in Toronto and his appearances over the previous months was astonishing, to say the least).

It makes me wonder, though, whether the Pope would find much to draw from in a crowd of 200,000 of me.

I think there's a clear tie-in between the "Why bother?"/"How to evangelize the post-evangelized" discussion, the "If not VotF, what?" discussion, and the World Youth Day triumph (the final Mass being the largest gathering in the history of Canada). The common thread might be inelegantly put this way:

Live the Faith as though you believe it.

A lot of Catholics live the Faith as though they know it. A lot live it as though they accept it. But when you live it as though you believe it, it becomes a fountain of living water that flows right out of you, and other people notice. Seeing the water will remind many of them that they are thirsty, and they will come and drink. (As my spiritual advisor, Dr. Catherine Benincasa, points out, Jesus offers the water of life to everyone, but only people who are thirsty will drink it.)

That, I think, is how you evangelize people who think good enough is good enough; that is what needs to be the basis of any lay reaction to any crisis in the Church; that is why the Pope is such a surprising winter lion for the unthirsty journalists covering him. Can anyone but a fool deny that the Pope lives as though he believes the Faith?

The responsorial at yesterday's Mass was selected from Psalm 119, the longest in the Psalter. If you read modern notes on this psalm, you find it's an acrostic, a series of disjoint statements about God's law arranged alphabetically. The notes can make the psalm seem like it was composed as an intellectual exercise, to be read more from diligence than piety.

But just imagine reciting the Psalm and meaning what you say: "I rejoiced to do your will as though all riches were mine... I take delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word." Joy and delight! In the word of God, in doing His will! This, I think, is a measure of how much we live as though we believe.

There are those who are displeased with the criticism of Voice of the Faithful found on various blogs (including this one). They point out that we critics have not proposed much in the way of resolving the crisis, while the Faithful are at least attempting something.

True enough, but I don't think this scores any points against critics of VotF. If I am stranded on a desert island, I can observe that my fellow castaway's plan to swim for the mainland is doomed, even if I don't have any ideas for getting home myself. Similarly, if I don't have a five-point plan for resolving the crisis of world, flesh, and devil thriving within the Church, I can at least suggest that rallying under the banner of lay financial power is not a sufficiently Christian approach toward pervasive moral failure.

For the record, I do approve of the efforts of VotF that match up with my own, humble and inadequate, two-point plan of prayer and fasting.

And in case you are asking why Wodehouse matters are being brought up on this blog -- whatever can be said for him, Wodehouse was not a particularly religious man -- I happen to have a little something that ties him nicely into my whole theme:

Why is P. G. Wodehouse the Master? Because his prose, being read, pleases.
In other words, Wodehouse wrote beautifully.

Thomas Aquinas gives three conditions for beauty: integrity or perfection; due proportion or harmony; and brightness or clarity. The integrity and harmony of a Wodehouse story is practically guaranteed; this explains why the range of his plots is so limited. His brightness, though, comes from his use of the language, invented, adapted, and synthesized to meet his needs.

What does it mean to say that a story has "clarity"? It means that the form of the story, the words strung together and the meaning they impart, show clearly what the story is. There are no hidden depths to Wodehouse; what some misconstrue as a weakness is in fact a strength of the stories he wrote. To add some psychological twist, some complexity of character, would be to ruin his stories. In this way, Wodehouse displays what Aquinas would call right reasoning with regard to his story. And right reasoning with regard to the thing to be made is, for Aquinas, the very definition of art.

P. G. Wodehouse was an artist.

I might also refer you to James V. Schall's book, What Is God Like: Philosophers and "Hereticks" on the Triune God: The Sundry Paths of Orthodoxy from Plato, Augustine, Samuel Johnson, Nietzsche, Camus, and Flannery O'Connor, Even to Charlie Brown and the Wodehouse Clergy, but I've never seen a copy myself.

This is a story about the Church in the United States, although the events are related by a young American asked at a World Youth Day-related event to talk about his experiences with the Church in Russia:

I only told of Baba who lived out in the country. We drove to her log cabin datcha so that Myron could give her Holy Communion. I guess Baba's family are non-believers so they left the cabin when we arrived. Baba was almost completly blind so she touched our faces when she spoke to us. She had cheap paper prints of holy pictures nailed to her walls and she was in her nineties. I had never seen anyone so happy as she chatted and fed us hot tea. Baba had no teeth, was a hunch-back and wore no shoes.

On the drive back, Myron said that she chatted again, as she always does of "her golden chalice." When she was a girl, the Communists shot the Orthodox and Catholic priests in the town center and she and the villagers witnessed the execution. As I rememeber the story, the last time she spoke with her priest, he said that she would get a golden cup in heaven if she kept the Faith and she persevered and I came to know her.

There has been a heap of criticism about the makeup of the National Review Board for the Office of Child and Youth Protection. Yesterday, Gregory Popcak summed up his opinion this way: "Not a truly informed, faithful Catholic in the batch."

So far the criticism has been restrained and thoughtful. I'd like to go beyond that and come right out and say:

I should be on the board.

Why? For one thing, I pass the "First, do no harm" test. Not being active in politics, law, medicine, or academics, I would bring nothing to the board that would skew it further in any direction it's already skewed in — unless they all also like barbecue and Wodehouse. (Though, come to think of it, if they don't like barbecue and Wodehouse, they probably shouldn't be on the board anyway.)

But I would also bring important skills to the board: I am a knowledgeable, faithful Catholic; I am not beholden to any interests; I use vulgar expression sparingly yet when necessary; I do not withhold my opinion for fear of offending or losing social standing; I've never given a politician or a political party a plug nickel; public opinion no longer worries me; and I think it's more important for the Church to save souls than to save face. As for what the Globe, the Times, the Post, or Andrew Sullivan might think, je m'en fiche de cela.

For 2,000 years, the Church has tried to get along without listening to me, and look where it's got us.

Fr. Jim Tucker gives the reason the Office of Prime was suppressed: If you're praying Lauds at daybreak, you don't need to be praying Prime at daybreak. He adds, "Still, it's a nice hour, and so I sometimes pull an old breviary off the shelf and say Prime as a private devotion, which strikes me as an altogether wholesome thing to do if one's so inclined."

A sentiment I warmly agree with, although I think you could also use a new breviary. In the reformed liturgy for the daytime hours, only the reading, response, and collect varies with the hour, so for Prime -- and let's use those critical words, as a private devotion -- you can use the daytime psalms from the psalter. The reading might be borrowed from the old Office of Prime: 1 Timothy 1:17 for Sundays and feasts:

To the king of ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Zechariah 8:19b for other days:

Love faithfulness and peace, says the LORD of hosts.

For a response:

Unto you have I cried, O Lord.— And early shall my prayer come before you.

And for the final prayer, the Domine, Deus omnipotens (good for a partial indulgence):

Lord, God Almighty, you have brought us safely to the beginning of this day. Defend us today by your mighty power, that we may not fall into any sin, but that all our words may so proceed and all our thoughts and actions be so directed, as to be always just in your sight. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

See how easy it is?

Where I live, sunrise tomorrow will be at about 5:58 a.m., which will make it difficult to fit in Lauds at sunrise and Prime at six o'clock, but I suppose it could be done if someone were determined enough.

Where once muddled and muddied thinking saw crankiness, Kairos now sees extra-judicial verbal injury of a neighbor against his will opposed to the virtue of justice. Score one for the perennial philosophy.

I was going to leave a comforting comment on Kairos, to the effect that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but then I noticed a lack of anything very comforting in the section of the Companion the the Summa that corresponds with II-II, 75, derision:

Do not be deceived by its air of jollity or its disguise of humor; [derision] is a petty, vicious snob that considers the rights of others as so many coins to buy laughs. It is the sarcastic weapon of the negative wit... Mockery saunters lightly into the house of the soul to rob a man of his intrinsic goods, his peace and self-respect. Its aim is to shame a man, to shatter him publicly that others might make sport of his shame. Christ was a victim of it when the taunts from Calvary echoed back from the walls of Jerusalem; nor has the satanic art been lost through the ages.

One of the great things about St. Thomas's Summa Theologica is that it is a perennial example of order and clarity of thought, from one of the most orderly and clear-thinking minds of all time. (Another great thing is that it's all pretty much true.)

Consider, for example, the topic of extra-judicial verbal injuries of a neighbor against his will opposed to the virtue of justice. The name of the topic alone exhausts all I have to say about it, but St. Thomas is able to distinguish and write perceptively about five separate sub-types:

Some people see writing page after page (the above questions run to just under 11,000 words in English translation) on such subjects as the perfect example of what's wrong with the Roman Catholic Church (too rational, too navel-gazing, too far from God, too far from the real world).

It seems to me, though, that it is only through clear thinking -- as typified by St. Thomas, though not necessarily Thomistic -- that we have a chance of understanding the world around us and making intelligent choices. If my intellect is muddled and muddied, it will present muddled and muddied choices to my will, and what my will does is what I am.

There is nothing about the times we live in that makes it opportune to be muddled and muddied, as an individual, a society, a Church, or a world.

Interest in the Little Officers continues to grow, with membership doubling daily. We've got an editor for the newsletter, Prima Horations, and almost all of us know someone who should be waking up at 6 a.m. to pray.

There is now a mailing list, Little_Off, for those interested in: a) restoring the Office of Prime; b) talking about the other "little hours" (Terce, Sext, None); or c) nostalgia for all those para-liturgical "little offices" that used to be popular among the laity before the reform of the Divine Office made the Liturgy of the Hours practical for most of us.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia isn't strictly correct when it states that he was "never formally canonized;" what it means is that his name has not been put in the RomanMartyrology. He is in the Greek canon of saints, and his feast is celebrated in Marseilles, which makes him saint enough for me.

I suspect the reason he isn't in the Roman canon is because of his espousal of what came to be called Semi-Pelagianism, his attempt to sail the boat of free will on the sea of God's grace between the Scylla of Pelagian rejection of original sin and the Charybdis of Augustinian fatalism before God's sovereignty. In retrospect, he should have sailed somewhat closer to Augustine, but the debate was far from settled at the time and if we dropped from the canon all the Church Fathers who taught what was later recognized as heresy, we'd lose almost all of them (including St. Augustine).

One element of Cassian's influence that is not widely known is that his Conferences was one of the two books that St. Dominic always carried with him as he went about preaching; the other was the Gospel of St. Matthew. I know having only two books doesn't sound very Dominican, but there it is.

...the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a movement dedicated to restoring the Office of Prime. We could call ourselves the Little Officers, and the newsletter would be Prima Horations. Local chapters would meet Saturdays at 5:55 a.m. in parish rectories, which would guard against people with different agendas from co-opting the movement.

''The core of the problem is centralized power, with no voice of the faithful... The people of Boston know what to do about absolute power - they showed the world 200 years ago.''

''No more donation without representation... We have to gain financial power in this church. They say the laity are weak, but we are 99.9 percent of the church and 100 percent of the money, and we now have a structure where we can exert that power.''

When the Boston Archdiocese refused the money Voice of the Faithful wanted to donate to particular archdiocesan programs, Muller was quoted by the New York Times:

"It is not the intention of Voice of the Faithful to undercut the cardinal... On the contrary, it's our intention to make these funds available to the cardinal for the good works of the archdiocese. We feel that what has undercut the fund-raising has been the scandal and that's not to be blamed on Voice of the Faithful."

The president of Voice of the Faithful apparently sees its mission as all about power. When he discovers that it doesn't have the power he thought it had -- in particular, the power to sling itself into a comfortable chair in the cardinal's office and start barking out orders about how the archdiocese will spend the money VotF deigns to give it, with the cardinal responding to each order with a respectful, "Yes, your excellencies" -- he falls into blather.

Yes, yes, stick a microphone in front of almost anyone when they're surprised and ask them a leading question, and they're likely to blather. But I don't think it's a good sign that the particular blather that the president of Voice of the Faithful blathered amounted to, "Hey, we're the good guys, remember? The cardinal's the bad guy!"

To be fair, if twenty thousand people like me were to form a reform movement, it would probably look and sound a lot like Voice of the Faithful (minus the echoes of liberal Episcopalianism). Which is why I'm not joining a reform movement.

There's a lot to be said for praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and Peter Nixon says some of it, and says it well, at Sursum Corda.

The post-Vatican II reform of the Liturgy of the Hours was carried out without much strife, at least compared to the reform of the Mass. I don't know of any magazines, still less schismatic groups, founded to resist the suppression of the Office of Prime. My guess is that this is because the Divine Office was always a clerical and religious thing, without much emotional investment by, or devotional material written for, the laity. That the reform was successful in meeting its goals of making the liturgy less burdensome and more suitable to prayer couldn't have hurt, either.

The trend, though, is of increasing numbers of laity regularly praying the Liturgy of the Hours. If I were still a cynic, I would point out that this is one way for layfolk to perform an activity traditionally reserved for priests that a) doesn't come with much public glory; and b) isn't being talked about much by would-be lay reformers.

If you're interested in trying the Liturgy of the Hours, I'd second Peter Nixon's recommendation of starting with a simplified breviary (Shorter Christian Prayer is one approved in the U.S. and some other English-speaking countries). The more complete prayerbooks are considerably more expensive, and you should probably make sure this form of prayer is for you before investing in them. (Also, a new English translation might be coming along in a few years.)

A word of warning for the novice: The Divine Office was developed over the course of centuries, primarily by a bunch of men. Consequently, it bears the marks of androcomplexity (the tendency of men to make things more complicated than necessary). In other words, the Liturgy of the Hours is confusing when you first get started. If at all possible, pray it once or twice with others who are familiar with it, just to get an idea of how it works. Then buy one of those annual guides that tells you where to put your ribbons every day. You'll get the hang of it eventually.

Newspaper reporters -- well, humans generally -- are known for ignoring the important points and seeing mostly what they expect to see.

Still, in today's Boston Globe article on the Voice of the Faithful convention, "Lay Catholics issue call to transform their church" (link via Gerard Serafin), the words "power" and "powerful" appear a total of nine times; the word "Jesus" twice; and the words "Christ," "God," and "holy" once each -- the last in a reference to a march on Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

The purpose of a formal disputation -- or disputatio, if you're being fancy -- is not to win. It's not even to make the other guy lose. It's to arrive at the truth of the matter. (See the quotation from St. Thomas in the left-hand column.) And since "Truth" is one of the mottoes of the Dominican Order, the disputatio is one of its customs.

The custom is being continued by the Berlin office of ESPACES, the Institut M.-Dominique Chenu, which sponsored a disputatio between two speakers with very different views. The first speaker "supposed that there is nothing true, but merely interpretations, and from this standpoint he invited Christianity to change hermeneutically." The second "insisted on the importance of the Triune God" and the truths related to Him.

The article highlights some of the important characteristics of disputatio, particularly in how it differs from the sorts of debates we are used to in the U.S. For one thing, the second speaker "began by acknowledging that he was in agreement with" the first speaker in two of his main points. The idea of acknowledging the truth in the other's position is one an American political debater might consider too risky to entertain, but truth cannot be reached by denying truth.

Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., former Master General of the Dominicans, put it this way:

In the disputatio the aim was not so much to demonstrate that your opponent was utterly and in every way wrong, and to be derided and dismissed as a fool. Instead you had to show the limited sense in which he was right... The aim was, through disagreement and mutual criticism, to arrive at a common truth, that was able to accommodate what was true in each position.

The other characteristic I noticed reflected in the article is suggested by these words: "After these two hours of disputatio, everyone gathered round the drinks table...." Though substantial areas of significant disagreement might remain, there also remains a spirit of comraderie, based on the shared goal of truth-seeking.

Imagine how different political, social, and religious discourse would be if everyone followed these rules:

﻿Is it not true, as Bouyer contends in Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (originally entitled Du protestantisme a l'eglise) that Luther's God was able to declare an untruth, i.e. to grant imputation of justice without impartation, only because Luther had previously accepted Ockham's nominalism which reduced God's being to an uncircumscribed and therefore arbitrary act of His will, utterly disconnected from an enduring, fully actuated, immutable nature, the very possibility of which nominalism repudiated in an a priori fashion? --

Fr. Keyes at The New Gasparian writes, "John DaFiesole sounds a bit like he wants to disagree with me."

Well, sure, if at all possible. This site ain't called Affirmations, you know.

But then he has to write this:

Yes his healing touch may be experienced as pain to us. But that is due to our condition, not to what he sent.

To which I must grudgingly shout: Amen!

You can't send what you don't have, and all God has is love. An unchanging God, His love is unchanging. But this constant and perfect love is experienced by us changing and imperfect humans in a host of different ways. As caring love when we are hurting. As stern love when we are resisting. As patient love when we are far from Him. As merciful love when we ask forgiveness. As healing love when we stop wounding ourselves.

Within an extended rumination on culture and lifestyle on the Goliard Blog can be found this statement on the "granola lifestyle":

I would add that it also requires an awful lot of bother and fuss and time for those of us who are scrambling just to gain a foothold in this world.

One thing I've noticed about a lot of "simple living" advocates is how complicated their lives are. I once read a story about a couple who had adoped a life of voluntary poverty who spent three days getting an old refrigerator -- including negotiating the price (around $50), driving halfway across the state and back, repairing their old truck when it broke down on the journey, and fixing the fridge when they finally got it home -- and then extolled this adventure as a triumph of their life of simplicity.

To such as these I say:

By all means, buy your wheat in bulk, reuse natural fiber sacks to bring it home, grind it yourself, add hand-pumped water, let it ferment into sourdough starter, add more flour and water, bake it into a loaf, and enjoy! You have my blessing.

But please don't tell me that this is simpler than going to the local supermarket and buying a loaf of Sunbeam Whole Wheat.

It may be better, healthier, safer, tastier, saner, wiser, and more fun, but it simply isn't simpler.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, I have a subscription to a magazine called Real Simple, "the magazine about simplifying your life." I find it hugely entertaining, mostly because its basic recommendation for how to simplify your life is to spend money. Is housecleaning complicating your life? Hire a maid. Laundry? Drop it off at the cleaners. Closet clutter? Drop a few C-notes at The Container Store. Cooking? Try this recipe from 100% prepared foods. The magazine doesn't promote unrelenting consumption, but it does recongize the simple truth that money makes a lot of things simpler.

Many people have an idea that there is something called "simplicity" that is a virtue, but their concept of "simplicity" seems to come more from Thoreau than from Thomas. This, clearly, is going to lead to problems. (And, most likely, another post.)

In classical theology, evil is a non-thing, a lack of goodness rather than something that exists itself.

Now, we become like what we love. A married couple grows to resemble each other. A miser is cold and hard. God becomes man.

Put the two together, and you can see why vices are so vicious. If I love to sin, then I become like sin, which is to say moral evil, which is to say...nothing.

St. Catherine of Siena put it this way:

It is no shame to serve God, for to serve God is not to be a servant but to reign. And the more perfect our service and the more we submit ourselves to him, the more free we are and the more we become masters of ourselves rather than being controlled by sin, the thing that has no being. For we cannot bring a greater wretchedness on ourselves than to become the servants and slaves of sin, since we thereby lose the being that is grace and serve nothingness and become nothings. [Letter T254, to Pietro di Jacomo Attaghufi]

When I think of my habits of sin, I usually think of them as things that are a part of me. It would be more true to think of them as holes where there should be parts of me. To the extent that I sin, I reduce my very existence.